The danger of a virus spreading from one mobile device to another mobile device is a growing risk that needs to be mitigated. Traditional antivirus software has focused on efforts protecting individual devices, such as personal computers (PC) and personal digital assistants (PDA), and these software products run locally on these devices and protect them against known viruses that are delivered via email or downloaded inadvertently by a user. Traditional antivirus systems for email server applications supporting mobile devices may employ a gateway that scans incoming and outgoing email messages. This type of gateway solution causes unnecessary delay in email message delivery.